Piese de Thomas Babe

The scene is a rundown farm in Vermont where two brothers, Billy Irish and Joe Witness, tell each other tales of their conversations with the likes of Mick Dagger and Bob Dylan and (as they also imagine themselves to be Jesse and Frank James) of the men they have killed in the course of their criminal careers. When a young couple appear, claiming that their car has broken down, Billy and Joe suspect a trap - a premonition which is borne out when the boy and girl shortly steal back, announcing that they ate Bonnie and Clyde and taking the two brothers captive. When all four are then encircled and held at bay by an unseen force which gives them two minutes to surrender, the line between fantasy and reality is blurred still further and yet, somehow, also illuminated by the ensuing talk of Vietnam, political assassinations, religious fanatics, Charles Manson and other people and events of America's turbulent recent past.

The scene is the newsroom of a small-city newspaper, the time late in the evening. the morning edition has just been "put to bed" and, ironically, so has the paper-as the editor has received word that this edition will be the last. the tired staffers-the editor; his long-time mistress (who edits the women's page); the aging copy boy (who used to be a promising reporter until drink and frustration took over); and the brashly self-confident cub reporter-are further jarred by a report that a bomb has been planted in the building and will explode within the hour.

The year 2084. A spaceship drifts aimlessly through space. On board are mainly Earth children who were all born on board. They have forgotten English and speak a language they have invented. An Earth spaceman beams aboard.

Jimmie, a salesman who loved his work, is thrown for a loop when his job is "extirpated" and seeks solace in bourbon. Jimmie, who is full of self-deluding swagger about his sense of dedication, and is, perhaps, not too bright, is grateful when his friend Curly offers him a job working for his father, Vinnie-even though his prospective employer turns out to be a loan-sharking mobster. Put to work collecting debts and performing other unsavory tasks, Jimmie, eager as ever to satisfy his boss, is eventually jailed on a murder rap, but bargains his way to freedom by agreeing to inform on his associates.

In a bar from Deadwood, Dakota Territory, in 1876, Wild Bill Hickok, now aging and growing blind, holds court. Despite his failing powers, Bill is respected and feared by the colorful habitues of the "Number Ten" saloon, and even the suggestion that he was a ruthless, cowardly killer who shot his victims in the back cannot dispel the aura of invincibility which surrounds him. But his confidence is shaken by the arrival of Jack McCall, a fiery tempered young desperado who vows to kill him and who claims to be Bill's illegitimate son. Taunted by Calamity Jane, McCall pours out the bitterness he feels at Bill's abandonment and humiliation of himself and his mother and, as the tension mounts, it is clear that, this time, Bill will not resist the inevitable. His death is, in a sense, an expiation, and for his killer, a desperate attempt at communication with the man he both loves and hates and cannot reach in any other way.

Part musical, part tragedy, part meloDrama' and he should know. The play is all of the above and more, drawing heavily for its inspiration from Elizabeth Wharton Drexel's book `King Lehr and the Gilded age', but laced also with inventive helpings of Babe's own brand of vitiating humour and sobering seriousness. The seriousness is personified in the fictionalised Wharton Drexel character, here called Bessie, the young, wealthy, recently widowed Philadelphian who moved to New York in the late 1800s in search of adventure. She found more of it than she bargained for in the shape of a curious new husband: glittery Harry Lehr who sang for his supper at all the `a' parties of New York's upper crust.

The play is comprised of two distinctly separate yet interconnected acts, in which a group of high-spirited young people learn first of the shooting, and then the death, of Robert Kennedy. The action begins in a park, where several teenagers-male and female-talk tough; rail against their parents; and experiment with drugs and sex. Their actions seem almost aimless and random on this warm spring night, until the news that Kennedy has been gunned down leaves them stunned-and unable to comprehend the meaning of this awful act.

A New Orleans bordello in 1888. The Madame is visited by her grown up daughter a doctor. Yellow Fever is prevalent in the area. Some of the prostitutes die. The police raid the brothel and it is closed down. The brothel is demolished.

Charismatic, dazzling and attractive to both sexes, Kid Champion has achieved the pinnacle of success as a rock star. He is surrounded by an entourage of groupies, press agents, would-be biographers and adoring fans-all of whom seek to share in the glittering excitement of his almost frightening notoriety. But even as the play captures the aura of this high-powered world, it also exposes the emotional and intellectual complexities of its title character, and the uncertainties, faced by a gifted, attractive kid from Kansas who is skyrocketed to sudden wealth and fame, and eroded by the drink, drugs, and messianic power which are so much a part of the rock scene.

About the picaresque adventures of Henry Hitchcock, a Union army deserter, and Will Hill, a runaway slave with whom Henry has journeyed to the north. they join the traveling circus run by a flamboyant impresario named Bartholomew Van amburgh, who wants to make Will, the newly freed slave, the centerpiece of his sideshow.

As the Union forces approach their gracious Georgia mansion, a group of Southern gentlewomen nervously await the appearance of General Sherman himself-sure that he is a barbarian who will allow their estate to be pillaged and looted.

Is 1915, the Salt Lake City courtroom where Joe Hill, the celebrated local radical, is on trial for murder. Obviously mistrusted by the conservative folk of his day, Hill senses that his cause is lost, even though the evidence presented against him is less than decisive. This, he knows, is his last forum, and he uses it to expose the complacency and small-mindedness of his attackers, even refusing to use the one alibi which could save him, because doing so would compromise a lady whom he loves and respects. Taking over his own defense, and punctuating his telling, irreverent interrogations with songs and fantasy sequences, Hill angers, dismays and ultimately shames his tormentors-bringing the play to a powerful, poignant conclusion and establishing the martyrdom which, he knows, will be his greatest contribution to the ideals which have motivated his short and turbulent life.

The action of the play takes place in the basement of a New Hampshire church, which has been set up for a small reception, on the day of a wedding rehearsal that never takes place. The bride, her sister, her mother and her aunt, a patrician group who have come up from New York, wait in vain for the groom and his family to appear-but they are apparently off at a local hostelry busily getting drunk.